The swarm forms on skid row. The sound is of ancient flight, the creaking of carts. The smell is of fear, alone in the dark. In the warren of alleyways south of Main, Jake and Natalie join scores of derelicts pushing shopping carts that randomly collide around them like pinballs. Funneled by buildings of moldering brick, the mob pours into vacated plazas surrounding the skyscrapers downtown. Fountains still shower in pavilions this hour of night though none in the army of unwashed consider halting to bathe in them. A beacon flashing atop Angelino Heights draws all forward ever faster.

"Testify. Testify," the red neon silently screams.

"That's prophet calling. Lord, hear him calling," Natalie says to Jake.

They rush beneath the black sepulchral Arco Towers and beyond the Music Center moving hurriedly through the county's court complex in a march through the municipal center. Clad in the layered look courtesy Goodwill Industries, the couple blend in with the troops of fashion unconscious garbed in mismatched amalgams of second hand coats, dirty shirts, shiny pants, and scuffed shoes. The throng hurries by the gleaming glass of the BeunaVenture Hotel, oblivious to the rain forest plants and far more carefully cultivated business elite filling the monumental atrium.

"I'll make it work this time. I promise," Jake mutters as they cross the freeway overpass.

He knows his wife can't hear him over the din of traffic rumbling beneath and the raucous rabble trudging alongside. After so many failures, Jake doesn't want her listening to this pledge made too often. The massive concrete interchange cuts the city core off from the mission district set by the rail yards. Jake stares down through the grating at a galaxy of headlights where Hollywood and Harbor Freeways merge and wishes he had the guts to vault the guardrail and hurl himself into the car starred commingling. He hasn't held a real job in over a year.

Across a macadam fan speckled with broken bottles, waste paper, rotting food, and even shit, the horde of homeless are borne by their own press and stench. Jake and Natalie are compressed with the rest onto a narrow railed ramp that inclines up to the maw of a cavernous warehouse. Like so much silage, the forlorn legion spills across the wide floor and gapes at a man standing center stage.

"Why he don't look special at all," Jake says keeping hold of his wife so he won't lose her to the surging mass.

The figure on the dais is nondescript. Not fat or tall, immobile, the man known as prophet has no distinguishing features at all. Animated, he mutates into an effigy of possession that moves in spasmodic jerks.

"Are you ready to testify? Are you ready to testify," he shrieks.

Eyes hollow with hunger and hope follow him across the proscenium. A nameless cry spreads like contagion through the assembly. Jake feels himself tingling with excitement like he hasn't in years. Natalie smiles at him and squeezes his hand.

"Then I give you a testimonial. We are the power. We are the power," prophet cries striding the stage.

He paces a platform once a loading dock while his arms appear to be juggling invisible cargo. They twitch as he speaks. People mimic the motion. Jake's shocked to see his wife doing a dance beside him because she's thirty-seven years old and gone dowdy, yet her movements are wonderfully graceful. More shocking still, Jake's getting a hard-on, and he's five aching years older and hasn't fucked anything but himself up for ages.

"Let me hear you stomp your feet one time. Let me hear you stomp your feet two times now," prophet sings out.

Three times, four times, Jake's bouncing like a pogo stick along with everyone else. Damn, if it don't feel good.

"Send a message down through the floor. Send a message out the door. Tell the world with your feet. Time is now, feel the beat," prophet screeches.

Jake's hugging his wife, and she's rubbing against him just the right way. The audience hoots and hollers at every line.

"We gonna shake this city to the ground. Gonna spread the word around. No more living in poverty. Pay the price to be free."

Jake feels orgasmic. With all the whoop-de-do, he barely hears the rest of the speech; plus Jake would rather not listen to talk about prices to pay. The only problem is Jake hasn't come, and now prophet's gone. His form suddenly vanished from view.

"Where'd he go?" Jake asks.

"It was the same yesterday like I said. One minute he's there, and then he's gone. Oh Jake, wasn't it great? Don't you just feel like you could take on the world and everything in it," Natalie says.

"I know one thing I'd like to take right now," he replies.

Jake can see by the look in her eyes his wife wants it too, but where can they do it? They've only got nine bucks, not enough for a room. But enough for a bottle, Jake hears a voice inside himself say. He hates what he's thinking, but it's a fact. Tomorrow if he starts early, maybe he can earn enough for a room.

Only he can't start early after a gallon of cheap wine. That and a hangover's what their money bought, and now there's a very different look in Natalie's eye. The one that's greeted him so many mornings when they've woken like this, sprawled out on cardboard beside some wall, their cheeks rouged with newsprint from using the papers for a pillow.

In a moment of inspiration, Jake blurts out, "Hey, let's go to the beach."

The suggestion's the one way to put Natalie's recriminations on hold. Refugees from the Midwest, neither ever tires of watching waves roll in from the endless Pacific. At least they haven't in the eighteen months they've been in LA. They have just enough left for bus fare to Santa Monica.

The couple has the beach almost to themselves this weekday in fall. They flop down just before the limit of wet sand. The clean smell of salt contrasts with the stink Jake feels himself radiating. What bothers him most is knowing he's brought his wife down to this. It's a wonder she's stuck by him or a curse. Jake can't figure which.

"Hon, did you hear what prophet said about the need to take action to change things," Natalie asks.

"No, but I sure felt it," Jake says.

In spite of a pulsating hangover that's keeping time with the pounding waves, Jake still feels some of the elation that energized him last night. Only just like with the booze, he needs another shot, a little hair of the dog to set him straight.

"He said there's a lot of work to be done, that his plan calls for everybody to contribute," Natalie says.

Jake winces at the accusatory look from his wife that accompanies the mention of work. Damn it! It isn't as is he's afraid of hard labor. Seven years he sweated in that steel mill in St Louis before they shut down the plant and then five more years busting hump in the oil fields of Oklahoma until a back injury forced him to quit. They headed west looking for something less rigorous, but now they're at the coast, and there's nothing beyond but water.

"The guy's got something. Maybe we should mosey on over to his mission. I'd like to hear him again," Jake replies warily watching his wife.

Natalie's smile tells him he said the right thing. She must still be feeling some of the charge from last night too. She even takes the lead panhandling, a first, and in twenty minutes has begged enough for bus fare for both.

Coins clatter in the fare box. They take seats near the rear. In the stuffy interior, Jake's again aware of how he smells and is dressed. Other passengers politely pretend not to notice or are caught up in their own dramas, the old lady desperately clutching packages, teenagers trying to look cool, mothers fussing with babies, professionals reading the trades. Jake stares at a clutch of business types out power lunching and remembers the way it was.

Hell, he used to have a speedboat, a motorcycle, a pickup. Natalie must be reminiscing too. Jake catches her stifling a sob while twirling a strand of stringy hair that once was perfectly permed and coifed. Christ, how he's failed her. Lost their house. Lost the vehicles. Lost his self respect after losing everything. Jake can't even bear to look at Natalie now. Bereft of makeup and clad in castoffs, she's dumpy from a diet of starch and booze and old before her time.

Jake turns towards the window. The bus is heading up Wilshire, LA's premier business address. Billions of dollars in real estate line the eighteen-mile stretch from sea to city hall. A dizzying array of landscaped forecourts, sculpture gardens, terraced offices and marbled foyers whiz by. All of the artifice, display windows filled with fancy goods, bas reliefs extravagantly carved into walls, intricately laid mosaics lining sidewalks, seem to say, "move along, keep away, we don't want your kind."

Only prophet has a use for him now. That's how Jake feels. Never religious, last night in the mission, Jake felt holy for the first time in his life like he was part of something vast, but suspicion lingers that there's something sinister in the agenda.

The bus dumps them downtown. Jake and Natalie enter the hubbub of the financial district. The smartly dressed lunchtime crowd is rushing around with such furious purpose that the pair seek refuge in more familiar surroundings, the broken down neighborhood due east. Down 7th to Main, the city changes aspect with the abruptness Jake and Natalie exhibit doffing their coats in the smoggy sunshine. Naked flesh of city and inhabitants lies exposed, and it's a dirty, worn form. Three blocks away skyscrapers boldly thrust high. Here, low-lying buildings crumble in gravitational despair.

Without even realizing, Jake and Natalie end up in the same alley they called home last night. In the very spot where they slept, prophet's leaning against the wall.

"Gosh, you're the last person we expected to find here," Natalie says.

Stepping forward, she bows her head as if in benediction. Jake hangs back wary of what he's not sure.

"You wanted to hear more of my message, didn't you?" Prophet gently asks.

"Reckon we did," Jake says giving him the once over.

There's nothing unusual in the appearance: blue business suit, black leather shoes, brown neatly cropped hair, blue unremarkable eyes, medium height, average weight, thirty something or certainly not far into forty. Jake can't figure why he feels such dread. He backs right into the wall when prophet lets loose in arrhythmic spiel and dance.

"When earth was a molten mass, I was together with swirling gas, but that didn't last. Shapes started forming, and a rage began in me that never passed. Now just cause I'm chaos don't mean I don't have a plan. You're part of it so I'm gonna give you a hand."

In motion, prophet's impossible to ignore. His arms and legs appear to be jerked from above by invisible strings. Jake and Natalie cringe as prophet pirouettes around them. Suddenly he stops, reaches into his coat, and flashes two twenties before them.

"Take them," he quietly says.

Natalie pockets one of the bills, but Jake hesitates.

"What's this for?" He asks.

"A birthday gift to her," prophet says pointing to Natalie with a gesture grandiloquent and sad.

"It ain't her birthday," Jake coldly replies.

Prophet fixes him with a lifeless stare. His voice is just as dead. "Chaos celebrates dissolution. For me, tonight will be her birthday." Standing still, prophet commands no respect.

"What's that, a riddle?" Jake snaps.

"Honey, we could get a room. Get cleaned up. Have a bed," Natalie says sidling up to him.

Jake looks down into her eager face, but her skin's streaked with filth and her breath's rancid. Plus, good God, he's hungover like a champ and not in the mood. Jake feels his hand close over something. When he opens his fist, his fingers are grasping a twenty. Jake hurriedly looks right and left. Prophet's nowhere around.

"Christ, where'd he go?" Jake says spinning around.

For twenty yards in either direction, the alley runs between solid brick facades. Where could a body disappear so fast? Natalie's tugging at him, but Jake shakes her off.

"I need a drink," he mutters.

He has seventeen by himself in a crummy bar. The last one goes unpaid. Jake's run through his twenty at a buck and a quarter a shot so the bartender gives him the boot. Drunk as a lord, Jake decides it's time to find the wife who stormed off when he tried to drag her into the seedy tavern.

Night's fallen. Jake's tripping all over himself wandering alleyways he's called home for the better part of a year. His search seems endless. It isn't until he stumbles over a sleeping bum a second time that he realizes he's going in circles. Exhausted, he seeks a place to pass out and skulks down ever-darker corridors.

In a place pitch black, Jake sinks down against a wall and lets his head droop. Before he can nod off or even curse his drunken ways, a shrill squeaking jerks him alert. It sounds like a herd of giant mice rumbling his way. In the gloom, the source is upon him before he recognizes what it is, the warbling of little wheels. A seemingly endless procession of bums is passing by pushing junk filled shopping carts.

"Where you all goin?" Jake calls out.

"Prophet be callin," someone replies.

"Lord, hear him callin," another adds.

A strange tingling deep in his innards compels Jake to join the parade. As soon as he stands and steps into the middle of the alley, it's no longer a matter of choice. If he even slows, a cart bumps him from behind. Jake must keep pace with the man ahead. In the dark, he can barely see his silhouette, but the smell is a beacon. Where the alley empties onto Main, another beacon signals.

"Testify. Testify," the red neon flashes.

"Hey, maybe Natalie's there," Jake says to no one in particular.

Carried along by the crowd, Jake reflects how his whole life resembles this flotsam like floating in an unstoppable sea of movement. His thoughts are drunken and fearful as the crusade surges across the freeway overpass. It seems as though the drivers below know the way, but that course is fatally off limit. The mission's directly ahead.

"Got to get off the booze," Jake mutters to himself.

Really, he wants another drink. The condensing of the flock forces him up the ramp.

"Don't want to go in there," he says.

But Jake can think of no other place to be.

"Natalie," he cries as someone shoves him off the ramp out onto the warehouse floor.

How could she hear? Prophet is shouting a sermon, and the audience is responding with hoots and cheers.

"When I saw mountains rise, I sent rain to wear them down, and water covered the land."

Buffeted by the increasingly fevered multitude, Jake watches prophet goosestep across the stage. It seems terribly important to hear every word though Jake can't comprehend what it means.

"But then what did I see, but that the ocean had formed new patterns, tides, currents, thermoclines, a tyranny of order, structured and everlasting."

The congregation's pushed Jake over to the wall. He grabs hold of a ladder set into the side of the building that rises up to a catwalk near the ceiling high above. He knows the danger climbing in his condition, but drunk, Jake's a risk taker, and how else is he supposed to spot Natalie?

"So I hurled down bolts of lightning," prophet shouts and flings down his hands.

Balls of Saint Elmo's fire fly off his fingers and splatter in glowing puddles across the landing. When Jake turns towards the wall to climb, he wants to cover his ears and scream. Prophet sounds like a screeching maniac when he can't see him.

"Ten times ten million times I cast lightening down until the ocean gave me the right batter of matter to hit, and life arose from the impact."

Jake's risen as far as his courage and the whiskey permit, halfway to the ceiling, about twenty feet up. Searching for Natalie, he looks down at the people milling below. Seen from above, there's a curious symmetry to their movement. The gathering is slowly revolving in half a dozen interlocking circles like meshing gears or spiral galaxies that stretch the length of the great hall. It makes Jake dizzy. He looks back at the figure whirling and shrieking onstage.

"Brothers and sisters, I knew from that point forward there would be no more order, that life would keep on evolving up to this very moment that brings us together."

It doesn't seem possible prophet's voice could strain further. Gouts of blood are gushing from his mouth, yet pitch and volume keeps rising.

"I say to you now, we are the power. We are the power."

The crowd starts stamping their feet. The building begins to rumble, and Jake hangs onto the ladder for dear life. The moment his eyes leave the stage, he feels a near irresistible urge to dive head first from his perch. When he looks back at prophet, the man's words flood him with power and purpose.

"For this you have come. To feel you are one. You're tired of picking through dumpsters, living like youngsters on charity, handouts and shame. So take to the streets and practice what I preach. Grab whatever you want. Tonight, it can all be yours."

For an instant, Jake sees Natalie in the mob rushing for the ramp. Then she's lost in the crush. Were it not for the railing on the walkway, scores would be forced over the edge. Some people are so intent to exit they simply make the six-foot leap to the ground and run off giddily screaming. Once down the ladder, Jake's swept into the mad flight pressed between hurtling shopping carts. His feet barely touch down until he hits the pavement outside.

The night feels wild with possibility. There's a concert of shouts, screams, sirens and breaking glass. Jake's looking around for something to smash when he spots Natalie a few yards away looking scared.

"Figured I'd find you here," he snarls.

"Jake, I still got my twenty. We could get us a room."

He stares at his wife as if seeing her for the first time and doesn't care for the revelation, stringy hair going gray, dirty clothes unbecoming.

"Are you nuts? Can't you hear what's going on? That's the sound of looting, and I want mine," he says.

Natalie cocks her head to one side listening to the rampage.

"I guess we got to do like prophet orders," she softly says.

"Of course we do," Jake replies and starts dragging her away.

Jake feels as if he's continuously falling forward in his relentless plunge downtown yanking Natalie all the way. On Broadway, they halt before a shop with busted out windows that sells consumer electronics. Bums are jumping through jagged holes in the glass and emerging with boom boxes, TV's and tape recorders.

"Wait here," Jake commands and lurches inside.

He staggers back out with a box full of blank videocassettes.

"Jake, what are you doing? We don't have a VCR." Natalie says.

"I'll get us one," Jake says with a wild-eyed gleam.

"But we don't have a TV," Natalie wails.

"I'll get us one of those too," Jake shouts.

"Where we gonna plug it in? You gonna steal us a home too," Natalie hisses.

"Shut up, you bitch," Jake screams slamming the box full of tapes down onto the sidewalk.

He wanders crookedly up the street. Ahead, a group of young toughs are pulling at the bars shielding the glass front of a gun shop. Jake joins them and helps rip out a big hunk of railing which is then used to shatter the panes.

"Quick, before the cops come," someone shouts.

Everybody piles in. Display cases are bashed. Rifles ripped from racks on the wall. Jake cuts the hell out of his hand reaching into a case for a .38 automatic and an eleven shot clip. His fingers are so slippery with blood it's hard for him to whack the clip into the handle, but he feels no pain. Booze and mayhem have him so high that he fires a couple shots in the air while rushing out onto the street.

"Jake, don't be crazy. There cops all over the place," Natalie pleads.

Squad cars are racing up and down the boulevard unsure where to stop amidst all the tumult.

"Now we can get whatever we want," Jake says brandishing the weapon as blood drips from his hand.

"You'll get yourself killed's what you'll get," Natalie exclaims and starts stomping off down the avenue.

"Where you think you're going?" Jake shouts after her.

He sees her point to the sign flashing in the distance, "Testify. Testify."

She calls back to him without turning, "I got to ask prophet if this is what he intended and why."

Jake watches her vanishing into the night.

"You know I'm doing what he wants. You feel it same as me," he shouts.

The darkness has already taken her.

Cops have come out of their cars and are rounding up looters at will. In the confusion, it's easy for Jake to slip away. A few random turns down alleyways, and he's out of the riot zone completely. A bandage torn from his shirttail stanches his wound, but his hand's beginning to hurt like hell. There's a sure cure for that. Just across the street's an open liquor store.

His hand's bleeding again, but Jake's too nervously determined to care. He grips the gun tightly carrying it in plain view as he strides into the little store. No one's around but the clerk behind the counter, a Latino who looks to be about twelve and plenty scared.

"Gimmie a bottle of Jack Daniels," Jake says pointing the weapon in the kid's face. Almost as an afterthought he adds, "And gimmie all the cash in the register."

It's over so quick it hardly seems real. Jake runs down streets until he's out of breath then slips into an alley and slumps down next to a dumpster to check out his haul. His heart won't stop pounding and not just from running. Jake can't believe what his bloody hand holds. There are hundreds in this wad, three of them, and eight fifties. He's too pumped and wasted to count the smaller bills, but there a lot of them. Jake jumps up and does a little jig letting out war whoops, but slinks back into the shadows when he sees someone cross in front of the alley.

"Christ, I gotta get Natalie. This is enough to get us a new start," he mumbles.

Jake worries about walking around with so much money, but holds the cure for that. Every half block or so he ducks into a doorway to take another pull at his bottle. By the time he crosses over the freeway, his fears are long gone. Jake's singing as he sways up the ramp into the eerily empty mission.

His song stops soon as he sees what's happening on stage. If prophet seemed manic preaching, it was nothing compared to how he looks humping Natalie. The man's thrusting so rapidly he appears to be getting electrocuted. In marked contrast, Natalie lays beneath like a piece of dead meat naked from the waist down.

"What the hell," Jake shouts.

Prophet pops off his wife and stands blocking Natalie from view. He's still making obscene pelvic motions with his erection aimed straight at Jake.

"You rat bastard," Jake snarls.

He fires his gun before even realizing it's in his hand.

"Jake," he hears his wife scream.

Jake tries to aim more carefully, but misses a second time. His wife screams again. Prophet's bounding towards him at incredible speed. Dropping the bottle, Jake holds the gun straight out with both hands and aims right at the man's prick. He can't possibly miss at this distance, but does. Prophet is upon him, then somehow passes through him. Now there's nothing between Jake and the stage. He can see his shots have caught his wife in the torso and head.

"Lord, what I done?" Jake wails.

He whirls and sees prophet standing bare-assed at the head of the ramp. Jake walks up to him emptying the clip. He fires six rounds point blank to the head. Prophet never flinches. Jake hurls the gun at him. It clatters onto the pavement outside. Jake charges and finds himself stumbling down the ramp after passing straight through prophet's body. On his knees, Jake stares up at the figure standing buck-naked at the top of the ramp.

"My God, you ain't real," he says.

With a sweep of his arms, prophet encompasses the vast panorama of LA while calmly stating, "I am the unmaking of all of this. Nothing lasts forever. I am nothing. What therefore follows?"

Jake stares at the darkened skyscrapers downtown. They appear monolithic and empty like something the Maya might have abandoned.

"What the hell are you saying?" Jake sobs.

Prophet lifts up his hands and screams to the stars, "I am forever."

***



Hailing from Hollywood, now in North Hollywood, Gregory Story is a well traveled, well rounded (216lbs. and rising) writer. Look for his work in such publications as "Agony in Black," "Hadrosaur Tales," "Permutations: the Journal of Unsettling Fiction," "Scared Naked," "These Thirteen," "Trip the Light Fantastic," "Futures Mysterious Anthology," and "Penumbric." Postings of his stories also occasionally appear at "Horrorfind.com," "WIldChild.com," "AlienSkin.com," "WorldsofWonder.com," "SaucyTalesoftheSupernatural.com," "NakedSnake.com," "FoolsMotley.com," "Writershood.com," "Tavernwench.com," and "BloodLust-UK.com." "Cyberpulp.com" will be publishing his novella, "The Cthulhu Cure," as a dollar chapbook in December of 2003.

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